January 16, 2006

This Headline Could Be: A Ho, Fo Sho (For DVDs That Is)

On Saturday night on the way home from a dinner party in Brooklyn (thanks again Matty and Jori, mucho tasty salmon!), Cinecultist stopped in to Kim's Video on St. Marks. We'd got it into our head to watch again one of our favorite movies from last year, The 40 Year Old Virgin and so wanted to pick up a DVD copy. Kim's is usually movie fanboy central much to our glee, but on a Saturday night at 11 am, it's particularly so.

However, Cinecultist didn't have much of a chance to oggle any fanboys in one of their natural habitats because we were too distracted by the fact that Kim's has changed their DVD categorizing since the last time we'd browsing. Those Kim's employees are so clever, for instance they put Francis Ford's film's all together but the movies by his progeny, CQ, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation by Roman and Sofia respectively are grouped just under "Coppola Children". Heehee.

Though the more we thought about it as we wandered, we couldn't remember the last time we'd gone a browsing and buying at Kim's. In graduate school, any spare bit of money not devoted to food, rent or drink was earmarked for film screenings, DVDs or movie books. "Research," you understand. And Kim's was our local pusher of choice. We knew it was bad for us to go there, but we reasoned we only needed one more hit to tide us over. In fact, now that we think about it, our entire DVD collection (all 100 plus beautiful discs) was acquired since we've moved to NYC four and a half years ago. We only got a disc player when we moved here, so all of these DVDs cluttering our tiny apartment came from an obsessive need to possess certain films. We loved them, so they had to be ours.

Yet, as we wandered the aisles, lingering longingly in the Japan and Korea sections, we realized that impulse seems to have (mostly) faded. Funny, where did that obsession go? Sure, we still heart the movies with a love that grows more and more each day, but we don't feel the need to have them all at our fingertips. The fact of the matter is we have DVDs in our collection that we've not even watched yet, let alone more than once which was our old litmus for plunking down the credit card. Also, it seems that the spare cash we do have lately goes towards different kinds of luxuries like taxi cabs, dropping off the laundry rather than doing it ourselves, pedicures during the summer and more dinners out with friends. Guess that's what they call cha-cha-changes.

And by the by, 40 Year Old? Not quite as funny as when we saw it in the theater but still pretty darn good. Though the chest waxing scene does get more hilarious with time. Good luck at the Golden Globes tonight, Steve Carrell and all our other favorites!